[A/N: Chapter 11 has been greatly changed, rereading it is advised.]
The next 2 weeks went by smoothly. Hannah turned out to be a great help. The cats and dogs with the mental ability got to realm 2 and learned elemental breath successfully. Delaina herself got to Realm 8. Hannah had taken a liking to Orange cat from the lightning pen and signed a contract with it, naming it cheddar. Soon after, Hannah began to cultivate as well.
Looking at her 'Magic Pet Shop', Delaina deemed it as ready for step 2.
By now, she had gotten a decent amount of money. This town was a medium-sized one. It was the type of town that people would drive through and stop to stay the night before going on their way, it was never their destination. Hence, it was the perfect place to expand her pet shop.
Going onto her computer, she bought all the houses that were already for sale within the town. After that, she hired a number of people who would go door to door, convincing and negotiating with them for a price to buy their houses and buildings.
This process took 2 months. Although there were a number of stubborn people who did not want to move no matter what you said, once you waved a fat enough wad of cash in their faces, they eventually agreed.
It took an additional month for everybody to move out. During this time, Delaina had gone a few cities over and adopted another child. Although her adopting another child may seem reckless, it was what she knew she had to do.
After all, she was not forcing them into child labor or anything like that, the kids had the option to say no, or to take breaks, not work for a day, or they could choose to simply not work at all.
Delaina had also cultivated through those 3 months, bringing herself to the 10th Realm. Lily to the 3rd Realm, Hannah to the 2nd Realm, and her cat, Cheddar, advanced to the 3rd Realm.
The reason why such common pets were able to advance so quickly was because of the numerous qi gathering runes and arrays found throughout the entire building. Naturally, not all of the qi was being absorbed for its purpose, so the unused energy would stray from the rune, and after a period of time, the hotel eventually had naturally high qi density compared to the rest of the town.
Another thing that happened during those few months was a large number of flowers had come in. This was because Delaina planned on cultivating lots of honey bees. This was for many reasons.
One reason was that your typical bee did not have an element affinity. And if it did, it didn't matter, because it would choose a place to start a hive or join a hive that it had the best affinity with.
So, Delaina simply ordered a large number of bees and lots of wooden beehives.
On each hive, she carved a qi gathering rune and a different element gathering rune.
Each hive would produce honey for the corresponding element.
The different types of honey were very beneficial for cultivators- animal, plant, or human- if it was of the same element.
It would be a good product to sell. It was also a valued alchemy ingredient, it tasted really good as well.
Another benefit of raising bees is that bees would easily sacrifice their lives to protect their home and their queen, which were both located within the hotel's backyard. Lightning, fire, and dark element bees were some of the best fighting insects.
Lightning beets were typically referred to as speed bees because of how fast they are. Fire bees were simply called flame bees, while the dark element was referred to as poison bees, wind was speed bees, and so on. Poison bees were especially deadly, and their honey even more so. Similarly the light, wood, and water element bees were good healers and support insects.
Raising all of these bees was a no-brainer. Flowers would grow, flourish, and create new species, which brought bank.
Elemental honey brought even more money than the flowers. It was also good for alchemy, which could increase the martial prowess of her pet shop or could save and take lives with a single spoonful.
On top of that, the bees themselves were an extra layer of defense for the shop. If she chose to contract one of the queens of the hive, she would have an entire hive of tiny suicide warriors under her command.
But out of all the bees, there was one special kind: Mental elemental.
These bees were a precious resource at this current stage.
Many bees with this affinity learned a natural skill called [Stealth], or another one they will learn is [Invisibility], or later on [Record].
The ability [Invisibility] and [Stealth], naturally, were to help them stay unnoticed. Ability [Record] usually only came in at the later stages. This ability allowed worker bees to record things that they had seen and could play the images or scenes back to the queen.
Why are these abilities helpful to Delaina… That should be pretty obvious.
Now that everybody in town had moved out, the first thing that she did was register her petshop properly.
Obviously, a pet shop that needed to be the size of a town would be ridiculous. That was why she registered it as a breeding base/mall.
That is because that was basically what it would become.
A mall for pets and cultivators alike.
It would be where the pets were raised, taught to cultivate, and cared for. It was also going to be where you could buy the necessary things required to take care of said animals.
Human products such as medicine, herbs, weapons, food, talisman, and even a few schools would be found there.
The schools would be for people with talent in cultivating, combat, and beast care.
Delaina was also still considering if she wanted to build another school for things like making runes and arrays, which are called array masters, forgery, alchemy, and even gardening. Her other option was to make this into a type of elective class that anybody could take.
She would have people stay in dorms, and she would have a building for families who were visiting could temporarily stay.
But this was for the future. She had long since planned to gain wealth and power before taking these steps.
But the thing with money is that once more and more people begin to cultivate… it would begin to be worthless and less, because people with the wood ability could simply duplicate money, or people with the mental ability could place an illusion trick on the cash, and by the time people realized something was wrong, there would be nothing they could do.
That is why the most common currency is in beast cores, spirit stones, or was as simple as trading.
But because the Earth never had much qi in it, to begin with, finding a spirit stone mine would be nearly impossible. And was not worth spending the time nor effort it would take to look for one. The gains simply would not outweigh the losses.
To solve this, Delaina would spend as much money as she earned. She would build all of this up from the ground with money she earned from side businesses and invest it all into more businesses. And once she was satisfied, she would stop expanding them and begin putting extra effort towards the visuals of her Petshop.
She would have by then been powerful enough to take on a nuke with bare hands, and she would have to fear nothing.
It was during these 3 months that the first-ever 'Delacruz Waffle House' appeared in a nearby city. The prices were fair and the food was served piping hot and speedy. It soon became a city favorite.